By monkeybeach on

Pretty much what it says in the title.

We have a news section that is growing at a massive rate. Its becoming a real problem to navigate the menu drop-down in menu settings.

Since 90% of content going into the site is of the content-type 'news article' I wondered if there is a way to have Drupal automatically assign the correct menu location for this content type to lessen the need to use the menu drop-down?

Appreciate any ideas on this.

Thanks

R

Comments

bwv’s picture

bwv commented

Perhaps what you need is a block PHP snippet that that draws into the block the titles of the news related nodes based on taxonomy term?

http://drupal.org/node/135344

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monkeybeach’s picture

monkeybeach commented

It's not the actual links to the news articles that is the issue. They aren't shown in the menu system at all, just in a view page.

Basically I want to place them under the drop-down menu setting...

Primary Links > News and Events > News

automatically if the content type is 'News'. So there is no need to adjust the drop down at all.

bwv’s picture

bwv commented

Have you looked into CCK and Views? Those modules may provide a solution, when used together.

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http://www.bwv810.com/

I am a writer and researcher. In my spare time I build websites with Drupal.
Je peux communiquer en français. / Я могу связывать на русском языке.

Drupalace-1’s picture

Drupalace-1 commented

Following up on (and agreeing with) the other comment about CCK and Views:

Rather than "place" each post under the News menu item, wouldn't it be easiest to have the News menu item link to a View that lists all nodes of your news content type?

That way, any post of that content type would automatically show up in that list, with no effort whatsoever during the submission process.

Or maybe I'm missing the intent.

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tinsmon’s picture

tinsmon commented

Folks,
I'm looking to solve the same problem here. And I'm already using Views and CCK, but that doesn't solve the issue. Our site is setup similarly in that we have a "News & Events" page that is basically a view. And, that view has been linked via our Main Menu. So, Home > News & Events is the "path". Because that appears on our main menu I am able to control both the bread crumb element on the page and the subnavigation.

For any news or event item (those are both content types) if we assign them the parent item Main Menu > News & Events then the bread crumb is correct (Home > News & Events > article). But, when a new News or Event item is created by our content people (who can't edit the menus) no menu is assigned, so we'd like to have it be done automatically.

In other words, when you go to the News page (which is a View) you do not see any subnavigation links on the side menu, which is how we want it. However, if you click on any of the actual news articles on the page you are then shown just that node and, since it isn't assigned to have the News & Events page as it's parent menu item it defaults to showing the "primary" links in the subnav. And, of course, the bread crumb on the page shows the wrong path.

I hope this better explains the issue and why using Views isn't a potential solution. Views don't determine the subnav or bread crumbs shown on a page, the only thing that determines that is being assigned to a place on one of our menus.

jastraat’s picture

jastraat commented

You can use the Menu Trails module ( http://drupal.org/project/menutrails ) to set a 'parent' menu item by node type.

tinsmon’s picture

tinsmon commented

Mainly, I want something to add an item to the menu. The breadcrumb module I'm already using would then take care of that. I've got the menutrails module installed and configured and it actually messes up the breadcrumbs for other types that I don't want to have automatically configured.

For those types that I do want automatically configured the module doesn't do anything (as far as adding to the menu). For example, I have two content types called "News" and "Events". I have a menu item called "News & Events" that I set as the parent for each content type in menutrails, but neither existing nodes or new nodes (of those types) are given the correct parent. I still have to do it manually.

jastraat’s picture

jastraat commented

Just to make sure, you did check the 'set breadcrumbs' box in the menu trails configuration...?

tinsmon’s picture

tinsmon commented

Yes, I checked the "set breadcrumbs" box and that's when I noticed the breadcrumbs on other nodes (not configured in menu trails) being wrong. So, I unchecked the checkbox in the hopes that I could just use the module to automatically add content to my menus (which is the feature I wanted in the first place) and it doesn't do anything.

The thing is, I'm already using a breadcrumb module (Menu breadcrumb) that translates the menu structure into the breadcrumbs on all my pages. So, if I could just get something that would automatically add nodes to the correct places in my menu structure based on content-type, the breadcrumbs would take care of themselves.....

renenee’s picture

renenee commented

Menu Trails was exactly what I needed to solve the problem initially mentioned in this post.